A heartfelt and humane sociological report.
An activist offers a view of modern life through one of the most dismissed of all social groups: teenage girls.
Despite a variety of stereotypes about teenage girls, they are “a wildly underestimated force for good in the world,” writes Goodan, mentorship director of DemocraShe and founder of the Activist Cartel. Informed by a decade and a half of experience working with young women of different races, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds, Goodan probes key issues, both internal and external, that girls struggle with on their journey to adulthood. The stormy adolescent feelings that can make girls appear emotionally “lawless” top the list. They cause well-meaning adults to take an “advise and fix” approach to girls’ problems, but the author proposes a far more effective idea: create a validating, nonjudgmental space in which girls can express their emotions. The need to speak honestly about themselves and their lives can also present problems to young women. In Goodan’s experience, teens such as 16-year-old Lori believe that “adults…cover the truth because they think [girls] can’t handle it.” What truth actually does offer is permission to successfully express selfhood. The pressure to be beautiful according to Eurocentric, heteronormative standards is also a source of profound female angst, causing girls to constantly question their value and social worth and fall victim to dangerous disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. When older women model attitudes of self-acceptance, however, girls like 15-year-old Rosy are able to articulate important truths: “[B]eauty is…transparency within yourself, not hiding, being real.” What makes this book stand out is the way Goodan allows girls to share their truths openly and without judgment. In this way, the author empowers young women by showing readers what they have to teach adults about the power of (inter)personal authenticity.
A heartfelt and humane sociological report.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668032688
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.
The former iCarly star reflects on her difficult childhood.
In her debut memoir, titled after her 2020 one-woman show, singer and actor McCurdy (b. 1992) reveals the raw details of what she describes as years of emotional abuse at the hands of her demanding, emotionally unstable stage mom, Debra. Born in Los Angeles, the author, along with three older brothers, grew up in a home controlled by her mother. When McCurdy was 3, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Though she initially survived, the disease’s recurrence would ultimately take her life when the author was 21. McCurdy candidly reconstructs those in-between years, showing how “my mom emotionally, mentally, and physically abused me in ways that will forever impact me.” Insistent on molding her only daughter into “Mommy’s little actress,” Debra shuffled her to auditions beginning at age 6. As she matured and starting booking acting gigs, McCurdy remained “desperate to impress Mom,” while Debra became increasingly obsessive about her daughter’s physical appearance. She tinted her daughter’s eyelashes, whitened her teeth, enforced a tightly monitored regimen of “calorie restriction,” and performed regular genital exams on her as a teenager. Eventually, the author grew understandably resentful and tried to distance herself from her mother. As a young celebrity, however, McCurdy became vulnerable to eating disorders, alcohol addiction, self-loathing, and unstable relationships. Throughout the book, she honestly portrays Debra’s cruel perfectionist personality and abusive behavior patterns, showing a woman who could get enraged by everything from crooked eyeliner to spilled milk. At the same time, McCurdy exhibits compassion for her deeply flawed mother. Late in the book, she shares a crushing secret her father revealed to her as an adult. While McCurdy didn’t emerge from her childhood unscathed, she’s managed to spin her harrowing experience into a sold-out stage act and achieve a form of catharsis that puts her mind, body, and acting career at peace.
The heartbreaking story of an emotionally battered child delivered with captivating candor and grace.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-982185-82-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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